Will Bowen, a Kansas City minister recognized that word choice determines thought choice, which determines emotions and actions.designed a solution in the form of a simple purple bracelet, which he offered to his congregation with a challenge: go 21 days without complaining.

Here are a few of the changes I noticed then and am noticing again now:

1) My lazier thinking evolved from counterproductive commiserating to reflexive systems thinking. Each description of a problem forced me to ask and answer: What policy can I create to avoid this in the future?

2) I was able to turn off negative events—because the tentative solution had be offered—instead of giving them indefinite mental shelf-life (and “open loop” in GTD parlance), resulting in better sleep and more pleasant conversations with both friends and business partners.

3) People want to be around action-oriented problem solvers. Training yourself to offer solutions on-the-spot attracts people and resources.